This paper examines the importance of knowledge-skill complementarity in the process of contemporary economic growth. By analyzing Dutch manufacturing and carrying out an extensive spillover and wage inequality analysis, it is shown that knowledge-intensive sectors pay their high-skilled workers...

This paper investigates and compares the changes in skill structure in six OECD countries (Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) in the period 1975-1995 using new OECD data on employment by skill level and type. For all countries evidence is found that...

This paper builds a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth outside the representativeagent framework to show that when individuals are heterogenous, persistent inequality will bethe result of economic growth. Individuals are assumed to be born with different abilities, whichwill lead to...

When new technologies are introduced in the production process or when technological change is incorporated in an economic model, it is agreed upon that this reduces the demand for low-skilled labour relative to the demand for high-skilled labour. In general the rationale for this argument is...

Internet, the fastest growing communications medium or consumer electronic technology, doubles its size every six months. Within a few years the number of citizens in Cyberspace will outnumber all but the largest nations. The borderless world of the Internet extends its reach to all corners of...

This paper discusses some of the new policy challenges raised by the trend towards the knowledge based economy. It is argued that this trend signals a further weakening of old "market failure" arguments in guiding public action in the field of science, technology and innovation policy. Rather a...

This paper discusses the position of the European Union in the world economy by focussing on innovation, knowledge creation and technology policy. First, we explore and analyse the concept of knowledge and its application in a modern Schumpeterian framework. Second, we address some new insights...

This paper presents some information on issues that have some importance for those who try to learn from the economic policy of the Netherlands. In particular we discuss the following questions. i) Does growth in the Netherlands differ from that of other Western European countries? ii) In which...

The human capital-augmented Solow model (Mankiw et al., 1992) has been criticized by Cho and Graham (1996) by stating that half of all countries converge to their steady state from above, i.e. from income levels above those obtained in their steady state. This is clearly at odds with the general...

For seven European countries macro-level indicators of the accumulation of intangible capital are developed. Using hedonic prices deflate investments in IT hardware, IT software and telecommunication equipment, for both intangibles and ‘smart’ tangibles capital stocks are constructed. These...